YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I have a hard time with feeling disappointed. For me, it can quickly turn into a stew of self-pity that works as an appetizer before a main course of depression. Having bipolar disorder, this process is able to happen within days, even hours.

I've been trying hard to work on it, but it is especially difficult when something goes down the way it did 10 minutes ago:

My therapist's office called and cancelled the appointment I have been looking forward to this afternoon for days.

I can only afford (and even then, barely) to go once every two weeks. Heck, if it were up to me I'd see my therapist twice a week! Or I'd have a live in brain I could pull out any time I needed some realistic reasoning!

The disappointment of not having that appointment today (the thing I have been hanging on for during the last two weeks) is like a punch to the gut.

Without a periodic reality check I have a tendency to make some pretty big, weird mistakes.

Well, Colonialpunk, you were let down, and you deserve better. I honor your sense of disappointment, and I hope you do too - I also hope you don't enter a destructive spiral because of it, because YOU are more important than this particular emotional response.

I am working on putting more space between the outside stimulus and my own response. I am trying to insert a short dispassionate pause before my response - honoring my feelings but not being swept away in my feelings and my typical automatic response. I is hard for me to do, it is very much a work in progress.

Please take care, all the best, we here are all cheering for you and your very best today and tomorrow!